Goal Planning for 2026

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We're almost to the end of the year, so I've been thinking about my goals for 2026. I actually have two sets of goals each year - the mostly quilty ones I share in these annual posts and the business-related ones that stay behind the scenes - which means I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want the next year to look. Before I dive into my 2026 quilty goals, let's take a look at how I did on the 2025 goals.

1. Keep making small quilts

I define small quilts as anything baby size or smaller, and as of my mid-year review, I had made two. Since then, I've made another five and quilted one that was already pieced. All of the ones in the second half of the year were baby quilts, except for my Bright Side Up mini quilt for the inaugural Quilt the North box. (And if you missed the first couple of Quilt the North boxes, but you'd like to get in on the fun, you can sign up for the Spring box or sign up for a whole year of quarterly boxes!). 

If you like the Bright Side Up mini quilt, stay tuned for something fun that will be happening with that pattern in 2026!

2. A Roman Adventure

The 2025 QAL and Devotional Journey was great!

3. WIPS-B-GONE 2025

Another successful WIP-busting challenge! I finished one baby quilt, finished making my blocks for the Kitchen Party BOM, and worked on a few other long-standing WIPs during October and November. If you took part in the challenge, how many projects did you finish?

4. Quilt the cover quilt for These Three and release the pattern

5. Make my Night Court wall hanging

Oops. I didn't get to either of these.

6. All the Stash Artists things

I love the Stash Artists membership! In the second half of the year, I released another three patterns (Cross-Stitch Heart, Showstoppers, and Disco Squares, which hasn't made it to the blog yet) plus we met over Zoom every month. I always look forward to our Zoom Sew Together Sessions! 

7. Go to Quilt Market

I decided to postpone the trip and go to the H+H Americas show in Chicago in May 2026 instead. 

8. Keep working on the Hexie Rainbow

Yes! As of the mid-year review, I was working on the first of four lines of yellow quilting and I'm now finished the last of the yellow and started on the first of two lines of black in the next ring of hexies. I just shared a post about my hand stitching progress, on both the Hexie Rainbow and my Shoo Fly Garden blocks.

9. Keep doing the strength workouts and get that step count a bit higher

Like it was in June, this is a yes and a no.

I'm loving my morning strength workouts! I do workouts by Lindsey of Nourish Move Love and I am amazed at how good I feel. I highly recommend her if you're looking to increase your own strength and mobility! The workouts are all free on Youtube and she has a bunch of 2 week programs, so you never have to figure out what workout to do next. I've been doing them consistently Monday-Friday since September 2024. When I went for my flu shot a few weeks ago, the nurse put her hand on my shoulder, then said, "Oh, nice deltoids!" It was funny, yes, but also felt good because you can't really see all the work I've been doing, but apparently she could feel it 😊

As for the step count...it's still around 7,000/day on average over the last 12 months, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

Now, what are my goals for 2026?

1. Keep making small quilts

We're doing a 'Mini of the Month' in Stash Artists this year, rather than a BOM, so there will be plenty of mini quilts over the course of the year. I have ideas for a bunch more, too, so this might be the year of the mini quilt for me. 

2. Make my Night Court quilt

I really would like to hang this in my sewing room, which will be much easier to do when it actually exists 😅

3. Make a Spring Sling bag

The Necessary Clutch Wallet I made myself back in 2018 is looking worse for the wear these days, so it needs to be replaced. After debating for a year or more about what to make, I ordered the Spring Sling pattern and all the interfacing and hardware needed from Emmaline Bags, so now I need to get to the making part.

4. Go to H+H Americas

My hotel is already booked. Next up, getting a new passport, since mine expired a few years ago, and booking flights. I can't wait to go and actually get to meet some of the quilty friends I've known online for years!

5. Keep working on the Hexie Rainbow

As I said last year, I don't want to set this aside and not pick it back up again. Progress will be slow, but as long as I'm still working on it, it's all good. How far will I get with another year of stitching, I wonder?

6. All the Stash Artists things

In 2026 there will be new multi-size patterns, plus the 'Mini of the Month' patterns, plus the monthly Sew Together Sessions... I'm looking forward to all of it! Here's a little hint about the January pattern that will soon be available for members (no, the stars aren't arranged like this in the final pattern). If you'd like to join us, get on the waitlist so you'll ne notified when the membership doors are open for new members.

7. Stick with the strength workouts and work on that step count

I've set myself a goal that I'll need to buy 20lbs dumbbells before the end of 2026. I started doing the workouts with 3lbs and 5lbs weights, and now I mostly use 10lbs and 15lbs, all of which we already had. We don't yet own 20lbs ones and I'm looking forward to the day I'm strong enough that I need them.

As for the step count, I'm not setting any particular goal, except that I'd like the daily average for the year to be higher than the 7,000 it is now.

Have you set quilty goals for 2026?

I'm linking up with Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl for her last Goal Planning Party.

Hand Stitching Progress

I've been stitching my Shoo Fly Garden blocks for a few months now, so today felt like a good time to take them all out and see what I have. 

This is what the finished throw size quilt will eventually look like. Emphasis on eventually!

That's 154 flowers made of ½" hexies, hand stitched to their backgrounds and with black snowball corners machine stitched. I'm nowhere close to that yet!

So far, I have 15 finished blocks, plus another 2 that have half their corners sewn on. I've been using these as leaders and enders, doing one corner at a time as I've been doing other piecing.

I have another 25 flowers stitched to their backgrounds and awaiting corners. I'm using mostly tone-on-tone white fabrics for the backgrounds, with some solid white thrown in, too.

And I have another 23 flowers stitched together. Pinned to the design wall like this, they remind me of insect specimens 😆

That's a total of 65 flowers, so I'll still be basting and stitching these for a while yet! This is my travel project, though I've worked on it at home now and then, too, mostly while talking to my mom, Aiden, or Zach on the phone, or when we have company.

If you want to make a Shoo Fly Garden quilt of your own, the free tutorial is here.

My other big hand stitching project hasn't received as much attention this year, though I have made progress. I'm hand quilting my Hexie Rainbow using Aurifil 12 wt. thread and I'm now working on the last line of the yellow quilting. Each of the coloured rings of the rainbow gets four lines of quilting and the black rings get two lines of quilting, on the inside and outside edges of the hexies. This morning I set myself a mini goal of having this last line of yellow finished before the end of the year.

The black thread pretty much disappears into the black fabrics. The coloured threads are easier to see, though they still blend in on some of the fabrics.

All of the quilting shows up on the blue backing, though!

It's really hard to get a good picture, but I love how the rainbow is appearing on the back. The texture is fabulous, too!

Both projects are obviously not going to be finished anytime soon, which is fine by me. I'll keep picking away at them and it'll be fun to see where I am this time next year 😊

Cross Purposes in Make Modern

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A new issue of Make Modern magazine is out now, including my Cross Purposes quilt! There's so much fun diagonal movement in this baby quilt!

When Paul and I went to a local trail to take these pictures back in September, I already had the pattern written and the diagrams for it created. This is a square quilt, so it's not immediately obvious that there is a top side, but if you look at the diagonal lines, they're different going from bottom right to top left and from bottom left to top right. It's not like looking at it one way would be wrong, just that I needed the pictures to match the way the diagonal lines went in the pattern. Of course, I completely forgot about that while we were out taking pictures. It wasn't until we were home and I was editing the pictures that I realized the quilt was rotated 90° from the pattern. Sigh. My first thought was that we'd need to go out and take new pictures, but a few minutes later, I realized that all I needed to do was rotate the diagrams in the pattern and then they'd match 😆 Problem solved!

I used Northcott Chroma fabrics, with Colorworks white for the background. Blender fabrics are my favourite, and I love the variation in colour in the Chroma fabrics.

I originally designed Cross Purposes during the 2024 Stash Artists BOM. Each month of 2024, I shared a block with members, along with a few different quilt designs using the block, and the Crossing block was one of the blocks. In Cross Purposes, I paired it with a four patch as the alternating block. Actually, 8 Point Meadow, which was in the previous issue of Make Modern, was also designed for the same reason. There may be a couple of other designs in that folder just waiting for their turn to be made!

I love that the Crossing block is designed so that the lines don't match up at the corners. You don't have to worry about matching those points!

I used one of my (many) off-cuts of Warm and Natural batting for this baby quilt. Most of my batting scraps are too small to make piecing them together into bigger battings practical, but this one was the perfect size without needing to be pieced. And don't worry, I'll be doing a Mini of the Month series with the Stash Artists members in 2026, so I'll still be using those smaller batting scraps!

I quilted it with my go-to double loop design using Aurifil 50 wt 2021. I love the extra movement the curvy quilting gives the straight lines of the piecing.

I debated between the light teal and the purple for the binding, but in the end the purple won out. The biggest reason the purple won was that I used the light teal as the backing and I wanted the binding to show on the back, too.

Our trail doesn't look much like this now. We've had a lot of wind the past few weeks, so all the trees are bare. That means there's a lot less colour, but it also opens up the view to the water in places. 

If you want to make your own Cross Purposes baby quilt (or any of the other fabulous quilts in this issue), get your copy of Make Modern issue 67 here. Or subscribe and get a new issue full of great patterns and articles every other month!

Scrappy Triangles Baby Quilt

Welcome to another TGIFF party! In case you didn't know, TGIFF stands for Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday, but for this week I might need to add an extra F for the word finally! 

In May of 2022, I wrote a blog post that started, "Way back in 2011 I bought the November/December issue of Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine and it had the pattern for this gorgeous scrappy quilt called Scrappy Triangles, designed by Jean Nolte." I then went on to describe where I was with my Scrappy Triangles quilt and that I had decided to make 2 baby quilts instead of a throw size like in the magazine. Well, here I am, 3 years after that post, and 14(!) years after I started cutting squares for the HSTs, and I finally have a finished Scrappy Triangles baby quilt 🎉🎉🎉 

Sometime in the early part of this year, I basted this quilt together at the same time I basted another quilt (though I can't remember which one), with the intention of quilting it soon after. Obviously that didn't happen! It has been sitting on the bed in the sewing room, just patiently waiting.

When it came time to write my project list for WIPS-B-GONE, I put this quilt right at the top of the list. When the challenge started, I was piecing the blocks for the cover quilt for the next Stash Artists pattern (which releases to members on Monday). I only have one sewing machine, and I don't like to be constantly switching back and forth between having it set up for piecing and for free motion quilting, so this quilt waited until I was ready to start quilting the Stash Artists quilt.

Once that quilt was basted and ready for quilting, it was time to bring this quilt out, too. I started each quilting session with 10-20 minutes of this double-loop that I love quilting so much. I used Aurifil 2600 because it's works well with all the different colours in the fabrics.

After those 10-20 minutes, I switched thread and worked on the Stash Artists quilt for the rest of the time I had for quilting. The next day, I switched back to the 2600 thread and did the same thing. It didn't take many days like that to finish quilting the baby quilt! Why had I put it off for so long?

Since this quilt already has every possible colour in it, I dug into my box of scrap binding pieces and just pulled out all the longest pieces. I had way more than I needed, so I removed some of them, then sewed the rest together. Even after removing some of the strips from the pile, the ones I sewed together were still way more than I needed. Oh well, now there's a good long strip already pieced for the next scrap quilt binding.

This quilt looks so much better finished than it did when it was full of basting pins! The WIPS-B-GONE challenge worked its magic for another one of my projects that has been sitting around way too long.

We won't talk about the second Scrappy Triangles baby quilt that is still just a top...

That's my finish this week! What have you finished recently? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes 😊

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Bright Side Up Mini Quilt

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Welcome to this week's TGIFF party! I've been waiting to share this mini quilt for a long time. 

A few months ago, Monika of Penny Spool Quilts messaged me to say she was thinking about starting a subscription box that would feature Canadian quilt pattern designers and Canadian fabrics. When she asked if I'd be interested in being featured, I couldn't say yes fast enough! 

I'm incredibly honoured to have been the featured designer in the first Quilt the North box! Check out this Instagram reel if you'd like to see everything that was in the first Quilt the North box, which was sent out in September. My box got stuck in the mail thanks to the Canada Post strike, but it finally arrived last week. Isn't Maple the Moose adorable?

Now that the boxes have all been received, I can finally share my Bright Side Up mini quilt. Aren't these bright colours fabulous?

Because the box includes all the fabrics needed to make the project, the pattern has to be for a small project (think mini quilt, bag, cushion, etc) and can't require too many different fabrics. My EQ8 is full of quilts and blocks I want to make someday, so I went browsing through that to see if I had anything that would fit. As has happened many times before, I found myself staring at this quilt I designed several years ago. I love it, but every time I look at it I wonder, "Do I really want to make that many flying geese?" 

It wasn't a candidate for the box anyway, since it's a throw size quilt, so I was about to move on and keep looking when I realized that just one block would make an excellent 20" square mini quilt. Ooooh, I liked that!

Then I had to choose fabrics from Northcott. No hardship there, Northcott's COLORWORKS solids are my favourites and the ones I use most often, anyway. Picking what colours to use was tough, though! I kept mocking up the block in different colour combinations in EQ8, and I loved every variation. Eventually I had to make myself stop playing and just choose 😂

The winning combination is COLORWORKS Dandy Yellow, Admiral, Patriot Blue, Love Potion and Toscana Ebony. I used COLORWORKS black for the background for mine, but it wasn't available when Monika ordered the fabrics for the box, so we substituted the Toscana. I love Toscana fabrics, too!

Though I'm not keen on making as many flying geese as I would need for a throw size quilt, I do like making flying geese using the 4-at-a-time, no waste method. I'd love to know who looked at 5 squares of fabric and thought, "If we sew them like this, cut them like that, then sew like this, and cut like that, we'll have 4 flying geese." My brain does not work that way, so I'm glad hers did, whoever she was! It's kind of like when I think about all the steps involved in getting from cacao beans to the chocolate we eat...who figured out that process?

I really love designs that take common units, like flying geese, and turn them into fun quilts. That's exactly what Bright Side Up is - classic units that come together to make something that looks more complicated than it is. I love quilt photography sessions at the beach, too 😍

Most of the time, when I'm working on a mini quilt, I'm going to do some custom quilting. Though I've moved away from doing that on larger quilts because of all the time it takes, I love doing it on mini quilts! As always, I used Aurifil 50 wt for all the quilting, which was done on my Janome 6700 domestic machine.

I started with the continuous lines in the pink flying geese. That's one of my favourite designs to quilt in triangles because it's quick and it doesn't have to be perfect to look good.

I did teardrop flowers in the blue flying geese (what would you call this design??). This is another design that doesn't have to be perfect to look good, plus you can do any size teardrops and add as many as you need to fill the triangles.

Then I did dense back and forth lines in the yellow star points. I love the texture that comes from quilting simple back and forth lines!

I probably spent the most time trying to decide on a design for the blue squares. I ended up choosing to quilt diamonds in the center of each square with straight(ish) lines. They're nowhere near perfect, but that's pretty much a theme in my quilting, so it's all good.

Once all the bright coloured sections were quilted, I did a dense stipple in the background. Black thread on black fabric is never easy! There were several times I quilted over lines I had already done before I couldn't see the thread. While that's technically a no-no for stippling, I don't think anyone will ever notice or care.

I'm obsessed with how the quilting looks on the back!! All that texture is just amazing and the black thread shows up much better on this side.

I've seen two finished Bright Side Up quilt tops so far, which is always fun. I'm really looking forward to seeing how people quilt their mini quilts. Even though we're all using the same fabrics, they'll still look different depending on how they're quilted.

If you want to meet new Canadian quilt pattern designers, sign up for the Quilt the North subscription box! The next box ships out in December, featuring a Nova Scotia designer.

That's my finish 😊 What have you finished recently? Link it up below, then visit some of the other links to celebrate their finish, too.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My Quilting Tattoo

A few days ago, I did something I've wanted to do for a long time! Here's a sneak peek before I share the whole story 😊

Eleven years ago, Paul and I got matching tattoos to celebrate our 15th anniversary. Up until deciding to do that, rather spur of the moment, I had never even considered getting a tattoo. When we went in, the tattoo artist asked which of us was going first and I said I would, because I was worried that if it looked like it hurt a lot I would chicken out! 

Sometime after that, maybe a year or two later, I started thinking I'd like to have a quilting tattoo. For a while it was just a vague, maybe someday kind of thought. Then I started feeling more and more like I wanted to make it happen. Problem was, I couldn't decide what I wanted! There are so many great sewing tattoos out there! Vintage sewing machines, quilt blocks, thread spools, needle and thread, scissors... On and on the choices go, and I couldn't settle on anything. I love the idea of a vintage sewing machine, but I don't sew on one, and, while I love my Janome 6700, it's not really tattoo material. I spent years collecting ideas on Pinterest, but that was as far as it went.

My other hold-up was I didn't know who to have do it. The guy who did our tattoos in 2014 had moved away, so I couldn't go back to him. Then a friend had a full sleeve of tattoos done and the work was gorgeous, so I asked her for the recommendation.

Back in June I took the plunge and reached out to her tattoo artist, Lawrence, and booked an appointment for September 30. When he asked what I wanted, I sent him a whole Drive folder full of inspiration and ideas, hoping he could turn it into something coherent. The only things I knew for sure were that it would be on my right forearm and I wanted a line of hexies that wrapped around my arm. I loved the shape of this vine tattoo, so I sent that along with a picture of some hexies lined up on a table.

Beyond that, I told him 'maybe include a needle and thread, or a spool of thread, or a hexie flower' with pictures of all the options so he would know what I meant. He said we'd meet before my appointment to go over what I wanted, and then I settled in to wait for the end of September.

The week before my appointment, I emailed him to check in, and he said, "I just finished reviewing your ideas..all good….we don’t need to meet for this…I’ll have this stuff put together for ya for Tuesday." What??? I wanted to see what he was making out of the mess of ideas I had sent, lol. Waiting those last couple of days was tough!

When I arrived on Tuesday, he had a bunch of drawings printed out and we sat down to build the plan. He had a couple of options for the line of hexies, bigger and smaller, connected or not. I chose the smaller hexies and connected, so it looked like they were sewn together. Once I could see how much space the hexies would take up on my arm, I opted to skip the spool of thread and the hexie flower, going with just a needle and thread.

He started with the line of hexies, wrapping them from just above my wrist to my elbow. Tattoos are done with a transfer of some sort that puts the lines on the skin so the tattoo artist can follow the lines with the ink. This picture shows the transfer, before he went over it with the ink.

Once the hexies were outlined, he added the transfer for the needle where we wanted it, then picked up a Sharpie and literally drew the path of the thread freehand. No wonder we didn't need to meet ahead of time! He wasn't satisfied with the first couple of tries, so he erased those with rubbing alcohol and tried again until he was satisfied. Once he was happy with how it covered the space around the hexies he sent me to look in a mirror to be sure I was happy with it, then inked it all. I asked if the thread could be blue (of course!), but he recommended sticking with black because the colour inks are a thicker consistency and aren't as good for thin lines. In this picture, the hexies are outlined, the needle is partially done, and you can see the Sharpie line for the thread.

Once the needle and thread were done, it was time to add the colour! I chose pink, purples, blues, and teal. He suggested having another warm colour, so we added yellow. It was so much fun to watch the hexies come to life as he worked his way up my arm! Filling in shapes is more painful than outlining is, though, so by the time he was getting to the end of the line I was definitely ready to be done.

The last thing he did was add a tiny bit of white to give the needle some shine, which I hadn't even considered, but is a great little detail.

When he was done and I could go to the mirror again, I couldn't stop twisting my arm around and grinning! I am thrilled with how it turned out!

The next afternoon I set up my phone and took a little video to show it off. You can see the video on Instagram. These pictures are taken from the video because I completely forgot to take pictures like this, so they're not the clearest, but they give you an idea how it looks when you're seeing all of me, not just closeups.

I did take closeup pictures after recording the video. The hexies look kind of textured, but that's just because it was fresh and the skin needs to heal. They'll look smooth once the healing is done. That can take weeks, though, and I'm too excited to wait that long to share it.

Seeing it makes me ridiculously happy. As a friend pointed out, that's a good thing, considering I'll be looking at it for a very long time 😆 

Someone else pointed out that a lot of people probably won't understand what it is, which is true, especially if they don't notice the needle. It's not the most obvious quilting reference, but I think quilters will recognize it, even if they've never done EPP themselves. Whether they do or not, I know what it is.

As we were driving home on Tuesday, Paul asked if I'd go back to Lawrence again. 

I said, "Yes, absolutely." 

"Are you planning to get more?" he asked. I just laughed. I have no plans for more tattoos, but I have heard they're addictive, so who knows? Haha!

Do you have a quilting tattoo? Or would you consider getting one?

8 Point Meadow in Make Modern

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking a link. This does not affect the price you pay.

It has been a while since I had a quilt published in Make Modern magazine (I think the last one was Illusion, back in January of 2023), so I'm excited to say I have a baby quilt in the brand new issue that was just published. Meet 8 Point Meadow!

Okay, as far as quilt names go, that's not one of the greats 😆 Why is naming quilts so hard?? I came up with 8 Point Meadow because the star block is called 8 Point Star in EQ8 and, with the green background, the pink, purple, orange, and yellow stars reminded me of wildflowers.

I think this was the first time I made a quilt with the blocks on point. I love how it changes the whole look of the block. Here's the block set normally; it looks straighter and less interesting, somehow. 

But tip it 45° and it looks more dynamic. 

The star points are paper pieced. I know it's possible to piece that unit traditionally, but I really like the simplicity and accuracy of paper piecing it. Of course, I used freezer paper for the paper piecing, so I didn't have to remove the paper from the blocks when they were finished (it's the only way I paper piece!). You can learn this magic, too!

I don't have a lot of pink, purple, yellow, or orange fabrics in my stash, but I was able to pull enough for this baby quilt without repeating any.

For the quilting, I chose not to quilt the star points at all. They're outlined and the whole background is quilted with a dense, loopy meander, which really makes the stars pop. They show up beautifully on the back, too.

The loopy meander quilting always makes me think of eyelet lace for some reason. It gives the quilt fantastic texture, too.

I wanted the stars to be the sole focus, so I used the same green for the binding and the background. Now that I think about it, I could also have done a facing to achieve the same effect, but I never think of that. Binding is just automatic.

For the pattern for 8 Point Meadow, along with 9 other projects and some great columns, get your copy of Make Modern issue 66. Or subscribe to get 6 issues a year, all of them full of inspiration and eye candy 😊 Make Modern is celebrating their 11th birthday, so subscribers get a fun bonus pattern, too!